I’ve learned a positive thing about humanity doing startups. People aren’t as threatened by your products as you might think.

On a previous startup, I published Wikipedia articles with mouseover links to similar citable sentences, so students could get around the rule that you can’t cite Wikipedia. I expected an outcry from teachers and lecturers but instead I had a whole lot of progressive teachers supporting the site. They saw it as a bridge to help their students jump out to other sources.

On NetComber, I published reports showing domains connected by ownership. When companies spun off sites that they didn’t want associated with their legitimate business, they were exposed. Our most common complainant were law firms like smithandpartners.com creating domains like getoutofjailfree.com. But I spent many sleepless nights worrying about the real bad guys. How far would they go to get these links taken down? Instead, the contact usually went more like this: “So, how did you work it out?” Once I told them, they’d change the site to try to avoid detection and come back politely asking us to update their records. We never did oblige, but I was pleasantly surprised that the response was mostly “we need to lift our game”, not “Let’s kill Luke Metcalfe”.

Now with Microburbs, I first thought we were just for buyers. We’re not beholden to listing fees from agents, like most portals, so we give just the facts while agents give just the gloss. ‘Buyers will love us, but agents will hate us’, I feared. Talking to agents, though, has been a pleasant surprise. In fact they’re really a lot like us. They understand it’s not enough any more to just pump out ads. People are ignoring it. Agents too are up against RealEstate.com.au. They too are struggling to be heard in an attention economy. What can agents provide that buyers can’t get on RealEstate.com.au? They know they need to be local experts. They fully understand the character of different microburbs within their area, and they are keen to be the first to introduce their clients to Microburbs.com.au.

It’s a lesson not to be fearful. The world is moving fast and small businesses, and players hitting up against real data every day, have to be pragmatic. It’s a great time to be a startup.

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